More Legislative Spending...

The recent Special Session of the New Mexico Legislature was supposed to address budget issues. It was supposed to address excessive spending. The only thing the budget got was lip service. Instead, the Legislature passed a bill making yet again another Cabinet department with all the associated salaries, bureaucrats, & spending. This new Cabinet department is called, New Mexico Early Childhood Education and Care Department (ECECD). What this new department is supposed to do is "ensure that all New Mexico families and young children have equitable access to high-quality early childhood opportunities."

Wait one...  Isn't that part of the reason why we have Children, Youth & Families (CYFD)?  To ensure all New Mexico families and kids have access to services & opportunities? Right now, there's an RFP up on the CYFD website regarding early childhood education. So now we have TWO Cabinet Departments doing the same work? Talk about duplication of effort! Double your pleasure, double your fun! Double your taxes is more like it!

CYFD has long had a Child Development Bureau, which attends to early childhood education and other early childhood development programs. The CYFD Child Development Bureau was established in 1989 and became operational in 1990. Tell me please, why do we need another Cabinet post to do what a different & existing Cabinet post is already doing?  Why not same some taxpayer dollars and just improve what's already there without another Cabinet Secretary at $150K, Deputy Cabinet Secretary at around $130K and then everyone else: Administrators, Admin Secretaries, Secretaries, Social Workers, yadda yadda yadda. In 2017, Monique Jacobson, Secretary of the CYFD, requested a $26M budget increase to $275M in state funds & when adding in Federal monies, a budget of $503M.  That's a lot of taxpayer dollars for a Department that has a poor reputation, a reputation rife with reports of scandals and controversies.

CYFD has a reputation for getting kids out of bad situations and putting them into situations nearly as bad. In 2018, 13 kids filed suit against CYFD stating that New Mexico lacks a system that ensures placement in stable placement in safe and supportive homes. A 14-yr old kid in the suit had at least 11 placements in his 2 times in state custody, before he was sent to a facility in Colorado where he suffered mistreatment that included black eyes & other wounds. Yet, CYFD kept him there for a year, knowing of the mistreatment. The lawsuit was settled in Mar 2020 with representatives saying that the settlement provides needed reforms. As part of the settlement, CYFD agreed to pay $2.4M in legal fees for the plaintiffs as well as their own legal fees. There were no monetary damages.

In my opinion, for what it's worth, the State should repair the broken system we already have rather than invest into another system that is a duplication of effort. It makes more sense to diagnose & repair a system that already encompasses what the new system is supposed to do. Anyway, that's the way I see it as a taxpayer.

Yours in New Mexico...